by Megan Hart
It was a more poetic speech than any she could remember hearing from him, but like the rest of this, it didn’t seem out of place. Bess let Nick guide her through the sliding-glass doors, across the linoleum, through the living room and into the bedroom. He kissed her mouth when they got to the bed, and she pulled away to catch her breath.
They looked into each other’s eyes, both breathing hard. Nick licked his lips and passed a hand over her hair, then cupped her cheek for a moment before finally resting his hand on her shoulder.
“What?” he asked.
“You didn’t used to…”
He kissed her mouth again, hard, before gentling the pressure. He pulled away just enough to say against her lips, “I didn’t used to do a lot of things.”
He nipped at her bottom lip, not hard enough to hurt, then ran his tongue over it. Her mouth parted for him and his kiss took her breath away, not from its harshness but from the uncommon tenderness.
“Stop thinking about the way things were,” he murmured as he lifted her shirt over her head. His palms skimmed the lace of her bra, then unhooked it and tugged it off, too. “Just think about the way things are now.”
It was so much easier to do that with his mouth tracing the slope of her breasts. When he suckled gently at one nipple, Bess cringed, pushing his mouth from her skin even as they both moved onto the bed. Nick lifted his head.
“No?”
She shook her head a little, not wanting to explain about nursing her boys, how things had changed for her since then. Not wanting to think about it, actually. She wanted to do what he’d said. Think about now.
Nick studied her for a moment, but said nothing, just moved to her ribs and belly. His kisses left a trail of tiny hot spots that faded slowly, only to ignite again when he retraced his path. His fingers toyed with the snap of her denim skirt, but before he undid it he sat up to pull off his T-shirt. Bare-chested, he knelt next to her.
Bess studied his body, more familiar to her after the past week than it had ever been. She reached to circle his nipple with a fingertip, then traced the line of dark hair on his belly to where it disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. Her hand fell away and he covered her with his body, bare flesh to bare flesh. The button of his jeans was a small, sudden chill on her hot skin and she wriggled under him as he kissed her mouth again.
They turned to face one another, legs entwined. Bess ran her fingers through his hair, relishing the silk of it. She cupped the back of his neck to pull him closer. Farther down, his shoulder blades jutted like the stumps of shorn wings. She traced the lines of his bones, and he shuddered against her.
“Tickles,” he murmured into the hollow of her throat. His hand slid up her thigh, beneath her skirt. “Why do you bother putting these on when you know I’m only going to take them off you again?”
He stroked her panties, then rolled her onto her back and knelt again. He used both hands to push up her skirt and hook her panties down. They slid without resistance over her thighs and knees, and Nick followed them all the way down to her ankles, where he tugged them off and tossed them away. His hands slid up again, over the same places, and his mouth followed. He nudged her legs apart with his head and settled between her legs.
Bess undid the snap and zipper, but with her skirt bunched around her waist there seemed little need for her to take the whole thing off. Nick’s mouth caressed one of her knees, then the other, and he looked up at her.
“Take it off,” he ordered, changing her mind about the necessity of being totally naked. “I want to see you.”
He got out of his jeans while she slid out of her skirt. He wore no briefs, was bare beneath the denim, and Bess licked her lips at the sight of his cock growing thicker as he pushed the material down his thighs and stepped out of it. He crawled up the bed to cover her again.
She thought he would slide inside her at once. She was wet enough for him. Ready. Aching, in fact, for him to fill her, a term she’d often read in books but had never understood could be true.
Nick didn’t do so. He kissed her mouth and looked down into her eyes. His hand slid between them and his fingers found her clit without hesitation. His gaze flared when she gasped at the touch.
“I could fuck you a million times and never get tired of it,” he told her. “There’s always something new about you.”
Bess didn’t believe that could possibly be true, but she believed he meant it. There didn’t seem to be an answer to it, nor did Nick seem to expect one. He stroked her gently until her hips moved and her hand gripped his arm.
Then he moved. Without ceasing the slow, steady circling of his fingers on her clit he moved his mouth down her body. His breath flickered over her nipples, but he didn’t pause there. The muscles of her belly trembled, but he didn’t stay there, either. Once more he settled between her legs, and Bess half sat, propped on her elbows in immediate reaction.
“Nick—”
She quieted at once when, without preamble or hesitation, he kissed her. His thumbs parted her swollen, slick folds and his mouth fastened onto her sweetly throbbing clitoris. His lips pressed her and a moment later the point of his tongue took up the pace and motion of his fingers. Bess couldn’t think of anything else. He licked her slowly, then faster when her hips lifted to meet his mouth.
She was close already. Not ready to tip into orgasm yet, but the pleasure building between her legs had moved from simple to complex, leaving no question about where it would go. Many times over the past twenty years, her body had stuttered or stalled when presented with pleasure. Her mind had overruled the simplicity of climax and left her tense with frustration.
Not tonight.
Nick slid one, then another finger inside her as he used his tongue to caress her. A third stretched her—not as much as his cock would, but she moaned anyway as he fucked her with his hand and mouth. Her fingers gripped the sheets of the bed she hadn’t bothered making. Her heels dug into the mattress as her hips tipped upward.
Climax danced out of her grasp, and her head fell back, eyes closed and jaw clenched in concentration. Nick’s hand slowed. His tongue followed suit. He blew heated breath across her wet flesh, and Bess let out a sigh.
He did it again and she tensed, hovering, ready to crash, but again the pleasure eluded her. Nick withdrew. Bess opened her eyes.
He rolled onto his back, pulling her by the hip to straddle him. She thought he meant for her to slide onto his prick, and though the thought of it sent a fresh burst of arousal through her, part of her sighed with disappointment at not being able to finish beneath his tongue.
“No,” Nick said hoarsely when she gripped his cock. His hands held her hips as she looked at him curiously. He pulled her forward. “I still want to lick you.”
Her entire body flooded with fire. It had been different, somehow, with her on her back and him between her legs. Passive, as if that made a difference. Now he wanted her to move over his body, to straddle his face the way she straddled his hips. Her first inclination was to refuse, and she shook her head, but Nick’s tug on her hips inched her forward on her knees. Her hands found a place to grip the headboard.
Now he held her ass, still urging her to slide her knees forward. When she got close enough, he wrapped first one arm and then the other beneath her thighs to push her body toward his face. It was the longest second Bess had ever counted, that moment between the time her clit brushed his chest and the one when his hands on her ass pressed her body to his face.
In this position she could move as easily as she desired, and Nick could either direct her movements with his grip on her hips and ass, or he could stay still. She could grind down on him, if she wanted, or pull away so only his breath tickled her. Caught between the extremes, Bess hovered until he smoothed his hands over her rump and eased her onto his waiting mouth.
A breath sobbed out of her and she closed her eyes. It was silly to be embarrassed now, after everything else, and it wasn’t quite shame that made her block out the sig
ht of things. It was more to keep herself from being overwhelmed by all of this, so new. He’d told her not to think so much and to focus on the now, so that’s what she did.
At first, his hands rocked her hips, but after only a moment or two of feeling the intense pleasure of his lips on her clit, Bess started the motion on her own. Not the same, exactly. He’d been too timid. She added a small twist to the action that soon had her shuddering with need.
Bess knew her body well and had shed many of the inhibitions that had plagued her when she was younger, but she’d never been in control of her pleasure in quite this way. She could pull away or move closer, rock her clit against his tongue, even move up and down if she wanted.
Her fingers gripped the headboard harder, tighter, as the coil of desire twisted low in her belly. Her body shook with it. Her hair fell over her face, tickling, but she ignored it as she tried to remember to breathe. The roar of the ocean sounded loud in her ears, drowned out only by her cry of joy when, at last, she came.
The world spun until she remembered to breathe. Bess unhooked her stiff fingers from the headboard and moved down Nick’s body to find his mouth with hers as her hand guided him inside her. They joined with a mutual groan. She tasted herself on him, for the first time not put off by the thought of it. She opened his mouth with her tongue, stabbing it deep as she took his cock all the way into her. Nick was pushing upward as she pressed down. They moved together, at first raggedly until they found their rhythm.
Her fingers clutched at his shoulders, gouging. Bess kissed Nick hard enough to bring the taste of blood to her tongue, and broke off with a gasp, only to dip her head and bite again at the smooth column of his throat. He fucked into her harder. Pounding. His hands held her tight against him.
It no longer mattered who was in control.
The sheer roughness of his thrusts gave her another orgasm, less liquid than the first. Her body tensed and released. Nick growled. His body arched. He shouted when he came, and that sound of his pleasure filled Bess with such relief, so much pleasure of her own, that she laughed. A small giggle at first, followed by a heartier chuckle.
Nick’s thrusts eased, and he opened his eyes. His grip on her hips loosened. He grinned and joined her laughter, and they laughed together until the bed rocked with it as much as it had from their fucking.
The Nick she’d known would have been put off at her laughter, but now he only drew her close to swallow up her giggles with his mouth. His hands smoothed over her back, over her ass, and rolled them both until they could lie on their sides, their heads on the same pillow.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked when his kisses got interrupted by her guffaws.
“Because I’m so happy.” Bess hadn’t known the answer to his question until she answered.
“Ah,” he said, and kissed her softly on her bruised lips. He stroked her hair and looked into her eyes. “Me, too.”
CHAPTER 14
Then
Nick lounged against the counter looking like seven different kinds of sin, and Bess was doing her best to ignore him. He wasn’t making it easy. The constant in and out of customers hadn’t deterred him from his place on the shop’s single high stool, or urged him to finish his obscenely large ice cream sundae. He caught Bess looking at him from around a couple of teenage boys trying to see if the accumulated contents of their pockets could support their slushy habit. Nick, his dark eyes alight, licked a hunk of dripping fudge from his spoon.
Slowly. With his tongue. Then he did it again.
“Sorry?” Bess snapped back to reality, her throat and cheeks heating, and paid attention to the boy at the counter in front of her. “You wanted a blue raspberry?”
“Two.” He pushed the small pile of coins and crumpled dollars toward her. “Four straws.”
“Mmm-mmm, Daddy oughta be spanked for wanting to watch them suck those straws,” Brian muttered when Bess jerked her thumb toward the slushy machine next to him as she passed on her way to the back room to grab up a new box of soft pretzels for the oven.
“I don’t know what’s more disturbing,” she said on her way back through. “The fact you’re calling yourself Daddy or that you’re perving on a bunch of skaterpunks.”
Brian laughed as he slipped the clear domed lids over the plastic cups and stuck two straws in each. “Honey, those boys are plenty old enough. I’m twenty-one. Only a year older than you.”
Bess snorted and started hanging the pretzels on their small, rotating hooks inside the glass warming case. “They might be over eighteen, Brian, but I’m not the one drooling over them.”
As all of this exchange took place sotto voce, it didn’t make Bess too happy when Brian sent an unmistakable glance to Nick’s end of the counter. “Not over them, anyway.”
“Shut up,” she muttered, and elbowed him in the side as she snagged the slushies and sent the teenagers on their way.
“What?” Brian’s look of mock innocence might have fooled a nun.
Bess, fortunately, wasn’t a nun. “Just shut up!”
For the first time in over an hour, the shop had emptied. Nick dug his spoon into the Sugarland Special, a concoction of four scoops of ice cream, hot fudge, peanut butter sauce, whipped cream, sprinkles, crushed chocolate cookies and a pretzel rod. He lifted the spoon again and let the oozing ice cream drip onto his tongue.
This time, damn him, he grinned.
“Mmm, mmm, mmm,” said Brian with a hand on his hip. “You keep doing that, Nick Hamilton, and I’m gonna think you have a crush on me.”
Nick laughed and didn’t seem to care if the corners of his mouth gleamed with hot fudge. He pursed his lips. His air kiss sent Brian into a shimmy of giggles. Bess had to turn away to hide her smile.
“He’s got a crush on someone, anyway,” Brian muttered in her ear when she tried to get past him on her way to the back room.
Bess, unable to help herself, looked at Nick again. He was swirling the long-handled spoon through the remains of his sundae and scooping up bits of chocolate cookie. Her stomach rumbled, but even she couldn’t convince herself her hunger for ice cream was the only thing making her mouth water.
“Hey, Bess,” Nick said, destroying her illusion that he’d really come in here to eat ice cream. “I’m having a party tonight.”
“That’s nice.” With a glare at Brian, she went to the back room to see how Eddie was doing with the latest vat of caramel corn. Mr. Swarovsky only let the Sugarland managers make the syrup, based on a family recipe, but Bess had finished the last batch a few hours before and had set Eddie to packing it up into the refillable plastic tubs.
“How’s it going?” She swiped a hand across her forehead at the swell of hot air. The back room wasn’t air-conditioned.
Eddie glanced at her, but didn’t make eye contact. “Good. I’m almost done.”
He was, too, with a task that would’ve taken Tammy twice as long to finish. Brian, as well, not because he was incompetent, but because he would have kept popping into the front of the shop to see what was going on. He was too much of a social butterfly to be stuck in the back, and Eddie preferred it. Bess was thankful, and not for the first time, that Mr. S. had hired such divergent employees. It made her job a lot easier.
Well, aside from the errant Tammy, who bragged about blowing Ronnie Swarovsky, the boss’s son, and couldn’t be fired no matter how many times she screwed up.
Bess realized she was shifting from foot to foot as Eddie worked, probably making him nervous, and that she really had nothing to do back there. Eddie didn’t need her supervision. Brian, on the other hand, did.
She didn’t want to go back out there. Almost a week ago, Nick had walked her home along the beach. Their conversation wouldn’t leave her. He’d told her she should find out what “sort of” a boyfriend meant.
If her last conversation with Andy was any indication, “sort of” meant not at all. Bess still wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She’d been with Andy for four years. Four good ye
ars. He seemed bent on throwing them all away, and she didn’t know why. She only knew she was far less upset about the prospect of being suddenly without a boyfriend than she’d been a month ago.
“I’m going to step out back for a few minutes,” she told Eddie, who nodded without looking away from the vat of coated popcorn and the spatula he used to scoop it.
The air outside wasn’t much cooler, and it stank of garbage, but since she’d discovered even the smells of sweet treats could turn toxic from overexposure, the slightly sour odor emanating from the garbage cans was something of a relief. She leaned against the warm bricks and pulled a pack of gum from her pocket. She didn’t smoke, but she could chew gum.
Andy had been so much a part of her life for the past four years, Bess had no idea how to imagine herself without him. They’d started dating her senior year of high school. Andy, who’d graduated two years ahead of her, had come back for Homecoming. He and some friends had crashed the Homecoming dance. The staff had turned blind eyes to the former football heroes and prom kings, who’d then demanded dances from all the girls in the Homecoming court.
Bess would never forget the feel of Andy’s hand in hers as he’d helped her down from the stage and onto the dance floor. She couldn’t remember the name of the Richard Marx song that had been playing, or what flowers had been in her corsage, but she’d never forget how blue Andy’s eyes had been, or how wide and white his smile when he asked her name.
She knew who he was, of course. All the girls would have. Andy Walsh had made quite an impression on the sophomore girls when he’d helped out with the football unit in gym class his senior year. Ms. Heverling had never had a class so interested in the sport before she used Andy as her assistant.
He didn’t remember Bess from that year, and she didn’t remind him that once he’d told her she’d thrown a perfect spiral. She never told him the only reason she knew anything at all about football was because of that year in gym. She let him believe she knew how to follow the game because she liked it. It had seemed a harmless enough lie. Important, even. She wanted to like what Andy liked. She wanted him to like her.